Val McDermid was assigned ‘sensitivity reader’ to cut offensive language from old books

The crime writer Val McDermid has revealed she was assigned a “sensitivity reader” to remove language that could cause offence from her earlier works.The Scottish author has sold more than 19m novels worldwide and is known for the authenticity of the dialogue in her work.The books she wrote in the 1980s and 1990s featured characters in law enforcement who used racial and homophobic slurs to reflect attitudes that were prevalent at the time.Speaking at the Out in the Hills festival in Pitlochry, an LGBTQ+ event, she spoke out about the changes she agreed to make before her Lindsay Gordon books are republished.McDermid, referred to as the queen of crime, said it was dishonest to make authors change their previous work to “conform” to modern-day sensibilities, The Times reported.She said: “I had to have a sensitivity reader to read my Lindsay Gordon novels to tell me the things that I couldn’t say now. I argued the case that these books were of their time and that it’s dishonest to try to make them read differently.“In most instances, I won my point. The few examples where I didn’t win my point were to do with race.”The Lindsay Gordon mystery novels feature a protagonist who is a lesbian Scottish freelance journalist.McDermid, 70, added: “I think it’s kind of interesting to look at novels that were written in a particular time. A lot has changed in 40 years. But a book set in 1987 can’t suddenly have the sensibilities of a book that’s going to be published now.”Asked if she was offended by being assigned a sensitivity reader, she replied: “I was more amused than offended. Rereading those novels again, there are things that I wouldn’t do now, because the world has changed. The characters would not behave in that way now, but I don’t see much point in going back and rewriting your earlier work to make it conform to the times now.“We need to have those earlier historic texts to understand how far we’ve come and how different it is now.”McDermid’s 1995 novel The Mermaids Singing was retrospectively criticised for the depiction of graphic violence and featuring a transgender serial killer who abducts and tortures gay men.The writer, who is also a national year of reading ambassador, met the Queen on Monday during the launch of a reading initiative at the Scotland" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="16182" data-entity-type="organization">National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.The Fife-born writer began her career in 1977 as a newspaper journalist in Glasgow, working for the Daily Record.